The Telling Gets Old
by SousLeStylo
Summary: [Oneshot] Lily Evans has broken up with her boyfriend, and so, it's finally time for James Potter to stop telling Lily that he's what she wants and just show her. R&R please!


A/N: I don't really know why I am writing this one shot, nor do I really know what it's about. I just liked this line from a song by Sufjan Stevens. Enjoy, and review if the feeling is right! 

Oh—also, to anyone who is wondering why all the one shots, I've got an update for _Oh Really, Miss Brainiac?_ coming next week.

**Disclaimer:** Most assuredly not mine.

**The Telling Gets Old**

She hated him. She really did. The… The berk!

Who was he to break up with her? _She_ was Lily Evans! One did not just _break up_ with Lily Evans! And especially not when Lily was about to break up with _him_!

There she was, standing at the foot of the stairs outside of the Great Hall. He stood one step up, always trying to prove he was "The Man". Looking down at her, he smiled in that pathetically charming way and said, "All right there, Lily?"

_All right there, Lily? _As if they hadn't been formally going out for the past two months!

"No, I'm not all right, Sam. I think we need to—" Lily had started, glaring up at Samuel Abercrombie.

"Look, Lily. I don't think this is working out, you know…_for me_. So, well, I think we'll call it quits, yeah?" Sam cut her off, smiling down at her.

Lily felt the familiar eye tick start up in her bottom left eyelid—twitch twitch…twitch twitch…twitch twitch. It was never a good sign when her eye started twitching, as many a way-ward student had found out.

"_Sure_, Samuel. That sounds fine," she replied through clenched teeth.

Twitch twitch… twitch twitch.

Sam wasn't listening to her, for he continued with, "And I know you must be devastated, Lily, but it's for the best you know? I mean, what with all of the exams coming up and you busy with being Head Girl, well I just don't see time for us."

Then he walked away. Just like that! With out one more look in her direction, the thickheaded prat was gone. Lily was left stuttering at the bottom of the stairs, her eye twitching madly. The small group of gossipmongers who had gathered to watch the show were murmuring to themselves about this newest development.

Oh sure, Samuel Abercrombie was a looker, and he was smart, and he was what the girls of Hogwarts—those who had not a hope for snagging James Potter or Sirius Black, had dubbed "Drool Worthy", but he most certainly was not on the same social rung as Lily Evans was! Samuel Abercrombie should've been counting himself _lucky_ to go out with Lily! She was far more popular than he!

And he thought he could just break it off? Just like that? Like it was nothing? Absolutely nothing? Never mind that Lily, seven minutes and twenty eight seconds before, had had precisely the same idea as he.

_Why_ had she even gone out with him in the first place! He was such a toff!

Samuel Abercrombie, with all his wealth and looks, had not a thing going for him! This was something Lily had come to the conclusion of as she was brooding over her evening meal in the Great Hall, watching James Potter and his friends chuck food at one another. Sam was arrogant, he was snooty, and he was a milksop! He couldn't even play a decent game of quidditch like Potter and his little friends could!

Storming down an unfamiliar corridor on the third floor, after having left the gossipmongers to their gossip outside of the Great Hall, Lily stopped and aimed a heavy kick at one of the walls of the hallway, picturing Sam's face on the dark stone.

"Bugger!" She shouted, dropping down to clutch her foot as it throbbed with pain. Just because Sam was thick didn't mean she should start being so. Kicking a wall? What was the matter with her?

Lily stood up, straightened her robes, and looked out of a window not far off down the corridor. Merlin did she wish she could chuck a certain ex out of just such a window…

"Evans?" Came a voice from down the way.

Lily turned her head, ready to yell, "sod off" at the offending student who was encroaching on her rage-party.

Instead she just glared as James Potter's shaggy head poked out of a doorway. It was seven o'clock at night. What was he doing there anyway? There wasn't even a classroom _in_ this hallway!

"What?" She hissed as James shut the door to the room behind him quietly and walked down the hallway toward her.

"What are you doing? Did you just kick the wall?" James asked her, running a hand through his messy black hair. He watched her in the glum dark of the hallway.

"Who are you, my bloody inquisitor?" Said Lily nastily.

James raised his eyebrows. "Only if you want me to be, Evans."

Lily glared and moved toward the window she had been staring out.

When James followed her, she said, "I broke up with Samuel."

There was a choking noise behind her and she turned to see James bent double and wheezing. After a few moments, he straightened up and said, "Oh, well, that's terrible. I'm so sorry, Evans."

Lily rolled her eyes.

"Shut it, James," she said, putting a hand on one of the windowpanes and pushing it open. She might not be able to throw her ex-boyfriend out of the window, but throwing the reason why she had wanted to break up with Samuel in the first place would be just as fine.

"No, really," continued James. "I always said he was wrong for you, didn't I? I mean, the berk can make a dog's dinner out of anything, can't he?"

Lily grimaced and tried to ignore the fact that James had just called Sam the same thing she had called him moments ago. It was just another step toward driving Lily insane. Really—they even insulted people the same way!

As if it weren't enough that they were Heads together, nor that they got nearly identical marks in every subject save charms, which James was rubbish at, and transfiguration, which Lily, in turn, was rubbish at. They were even made Slug Club members in the same evening!

"Yes, he always was good at that," Lily replied.

"Not to mention," said James, "you could do much better than him, Lily."

Lily rolled her eyes. She knew well what was coming now—the classic Declaration of Love from one James Potter. Over the past three years, Lily must have heard these declarations three times a week. Even as Head Boy, it took all of James's might to refrain from using one at a meeting or when they sat in the Heads's common room at night.

But the thing that really got Lily? Despite every one of James's flowery words, impassioned pleas, annoying insinuations, and loud assertions, he hadn't once dared to touch her. He bragged and boasted to Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew about what he'd said to her, or how close he'd sat next to her—she'd heard him clear enough across the Gryffindor common room! But none of his boasting was true.

James Potter was all words. Predictably, he launched enthusiastically into his well-practiced avowals.

"You know, if you'd just go out with me, Lily, you'd see what every girl at Hogwarts is exclaiming about these days. I'm sure even a quick snog would enlighten you!" James grinned seductively at her and lifted his head in that arrogant manner he had.

All of a sudden, Lily felt her eye start to twitch. Twitch twitch…twitch twitch…twitch twitch.

James thought he was the king of the realm, did he? That he was solid as stone, eh? Well, Lily would show him.

Turning away from the window, she sauntered toward him. Flicking hair away from her face, Lily sidled up close to James so that her mouth was next to her ear and whispered, "You know, the telling gets old sometimes, James."

She could hear him gulp and she smirked.

"What… what do you mean, Lily?" James stuttered.

Lily put a hand on his shoulder and said in as husky a voice as she could manage, "I mean, you're all talk and no action, Potter. What kind of wizard are you? You say you like me, that a 'quick snog' would surely show me The Way to enlightenment…but where are the fruits of your labors?"

James didn't say anything, but stared at Lily as if she were professor Slughorn in a tri-corn hat and a mauve walking dress.

"Why don't you stop telling me and everyone else how much I should want you, and just…show me what you think it is I want?" Lily finished.

She stepped away from James and started to walk down the hallway quickly, dragging in a deep breath. What had she just done! What had she been thinking? _Why_ had she just given James Potter a proposition?

Her heart was beating wildly and her legs were shaking. She might be high up on the social ladder, and Samuel Abercrombie might have been lucky to date her, but Lily Evans had just done something she thought she would _never_ have the gall to do!

James Potter had chased after her for years, and now, here she was chasing him right back! This is what she got for getting carried away!

Right on cue, footsteps started to pound down the corridor after her. Lily braced herself as James's hand grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. He didn't say a single thing. Instead, he just stared at her for a few moments before clearing his throat.

Then, quite suddenly, James Potter was _kissing_ her. She didn't know how it happened, but James was pressing his lips against hers, running his hands over her shoulders and down her arms. Lily, against her will, breathed in his scent of broom polish, spearmint, and fresh ink as he deepened the kiss.

After what seemed like ages, James broke away from Lily, whose face was flushed red from the invisible heater James seemed to have secretly installed two inches away. He cleared his throat again and Lily said, "So _that's_ what you think I want?"

James grinned and replied, "You said it yourself, Evans—the telling gets old."

Lily grinned triumphantly at James as he started to tug her down the corridor; apparently having forgotten long ago whatever it was he was doing in that misplaced classroom.

After all, sitting at dinner that night, watching him flick fork-fulls of hot pot at his mates, Lily had realized something about James Potter. All of the times he told Lily that he only had eyes for her, and that he'd make an "honest bird" out of her someday, had taken their toll on her. She realized then and there that she had to break up with Samuel Abercrombie because the only arrogant, thickheaded prat _she _wanted was James Potter.


End file.
